How to Help Your Aging Parents Successfully Manage Their Finances

Discussing financial management with seniors isn’t easy, especially when you’re talking about someone else’s. As adult children, it can be hard breaching the topic of finances with your parents, as you don’t want to feel like you’re overstepping your bounds. It’s an uncomfortable subject for a lot of people, which is why it’s often avoided or forgotten about.

For parents, they don’t want to admit that they need help. For the children, it’s hard to imagine their parents needing help on something that they have been doing all their life. We think that by simply sitting down with them and opening up the conversation about finances, you could be getting off to a good start. You want to reassure them that they are still in charge of their own finances but that you’re around to help.

Here are a few things to consider first.

Respect their wishes and always act in their best interest

Talking about finances will be hard for your parents, so you need to be both respectful and sensitive when bringing up the topic. If there are things that they are adamant that they don’t want to talk about, you need to respect this and not push them into disclosing information.

If you’re the one having to make decisions, you should try to involve them in the process as much as possible.

Help them organise their documents

Do your parents know where all their important documents are located? You should ask them to get them all out so that you can go through them together. This could be; utility bills, bank statements, pension information and any other money that they receive or pay out.

Put together a plan for their financial details

Once you’ve organised all the important documents, you can then put together a plan for going forward, including who is going to pay bills and when they need to be paid. Work out when their pension is paid, as well as putting together a list of all their monthly expenses.

It might also be useful to make a note of any bank accounts they have and what savings are in these accounts.

Hire a Financial Expert

There is only so much that you can do for your parents when it comes to finances, and it’s okay to admit that you need help. A financial expert will be able to spot things that you have missed or be able to come up with a better plan in the case of complex situations.

You can be assured that you’re leaving your parents in the hands of a professional.

If you think your parents need some extra help with their finances, we can help you out.

Here at Burton & Fisher, we specialise in financial services, offering help with matters such as pensions and wealth management in Lancaster. If you have any concerns regarding your finances, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We have a team of expert staff who will be happy to offer their help and advice.

Just give us a call on 01524 416872 and a member of our team will be happy to help. Alternatively, you can follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

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